Ardmona sits about 10km west of the Shepparton CBD, out past Mooroopna in the heart of the Goulburn Valley’s fruit-growing country. This has been orchard and cannery land for well over a century, the Shepparton Preserving Company that became SPC was founded in 1917 and turned the district’s peaches, pears and apples into a national brand, and Ardmona still runs to irrigated orchards, farm blocks and homes set among big old trees. That history is why tree work here is different from suburban Shepparton. The trees are large, old and often significant, river red gums along the channels and creeks, mature shelterbelt rows, and self-sown gums on paddock edges, and on flat, exposed country the wind and the heat work on all of them. A lot of our Ardmona jobs are hazard and clearing driven: a dead red gum leaning towards a house or shed, a limb dropped across a fence after a summer storm, or an old orchard being pulled out for replanting, handled through tree removal or, after a blow, emergency tree removal. We are qualified arborists, not just blokes with a chainsaw, so we read each tree before we touch it: its lean, its load, its health, the wind, and what sits underneath it. River red gums in particular are known for dropping heavy limbs without warning, so on a treed block we rig and lower in a controlled way, or bring in an elevated work platform for height, rather than dropping a big gum whole and hoping. Because we run our own crew and gear, the Peak Tree Removal Shepparton team that quotes your job is the team that does it, with owner Steve on site and one point of contact from the first look to the final clean-up. There is no subcontracting a risky removal out to a cheaper crew who has never seen the tree, which is how limbs end up through roofs, sheds and windscreens.